As officials warned North Side residents to be vigilant, police
Tuesday described the chilling methods of a repeat rapist who most
recently struck last weekend in Lincoln Park.

The attacker typically enters a victim's home through an unlocked
door or window during early morning hours, covers her face as he
assaults her and then forces her to bathe, presumably to remove DNA
evidence, while he rummages through the home, police said.

"I certainly think he's a serial rapist," Kenosha Police Lt. John
Morrissey said, noting that the suspect might have committed crimes
police have yet to link to his profile. "He's going to strike again,
unfortunately, until we get someone arrested here."

Police said the suspect has been linked to five sexual assaults in
Chicago and one each in Lisle and Kenosha since July 1999.

DNA evidence gathered from the first four cases point to the same
perpetrator, Chicago police David Bayless said. Details from the last
three attacks led police to believe it was the same man, he added.

On Tuesday afternoon, several Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy
organizers distributed leaflets with a description of the suspect in
front of the Armitage "L" station in Lincoln Park. After an hour,
most shop windows around the station carried a description of the
attacker.

"This gives everyone pause," said Elizabeth Hrycyk, 34, as she
grabbed a flier while walking past the Armitage station on her way
home from work. "It's terrible for all women. Everyone is talking
about this."

In the last attack, which occurred about 4 a.m. Saturday on the 2000
block of North Cleveland Avenue, the rapist entered the window of a
ground-floor condominium. "Physically, she's fine," the victim's
father said Tuesday. "She went to work today."

But the victim is "checking her options" on moving, her father said.

Stepping out to feed a parking meter, Katie Anderson, 36, picked up
two purple fliers and brought them back to the Starbucks at Armitage
and Sheffield Avenues where she was sitting with a friend, Katie
O'Donnell, 34.

Anderson said she knew the victim who was attacked on Oct. 15 in the
3500 block of North Greenview Avenue.

"It sounded like the same guy," she said, adding that the rapist
entered through an unlocked window. "After he attacked her, he told
her to take a shower, but he didn't stay. When he left, the woman
called the police."

Although none of the victims could give police a detailed description
of her attacker, he has been described at a white Hispanic male, 5
feet 5 to 5 feet 8, 145 to 160 pounds and between ages 25 and 35.

The most detailed description of an attack has come from Kenosha
police, where the rapist attacked about 2:30 a.m. Aug. 22 in the
10900 block of 75th Street, about a half mile from Interstate Highway
94.

The attacker entered a shut but unlocked second-story patio apartment
window and went to the bedroom of the 51-year-old victim. "He put a
pillow over her face and started punching her in the face and
stomach," Morrissey said. When she fought back, he said he had a
knife, threatened to stab her and raped her, he said.

After that, he forced her to take a shower. While she did, he used a
flashlight to search the still-dark apartment and stole $50.

The first reported attack took place at 5:30 a.m. July 5, 1999, in
the 1300 block of Dean Street in Wicker Park. The second occurred at
3 a.m. May 26, 2002, in the 1300 block of North Greenview Avenue.

The next attack linked to the rapist took place at about 11 p.m.
March 17 in the parking lot of the Four Lakes apartment complex in
Lisle.

Though the Lisle attack has been linked by DNA to the first two
Chicago attacks and the Kenosha attack, it was substantially
different, said Deputy Lisle Police Chief James Kosatka.

In that case, the victim, who did not live at the complex, had pulled
into the lot "to look around," he said. The rapist forced her out of
the car, dragged her to a nearby wooded area, raped her and fled.

The fourth known attack was in Kenosha, and the fifth took place last
October. The sixth attack occurred at 2:30 a.m. Dec. 20 in the 1300
block of West Ohio Street.

Police and community organizers will discuss the Lincoln Park attack
at a CAPS meeting at 7 p.m. Wednesday in Lincoln Park Hospital, 550
Webster Pl.